I’m marching for Choice on 24th September because I want to secure free, safe, and legal abortion services in Ireland.
I see dignity of the person and bodily autonomy as central to abortion rights. Each of us needs to be able to direct the course of our own lives, based on informed decisions. We need to be able to choose what is right for us (and sometimes, for those closest to us). We need to be able to make these choices so that we can be best equipped to realize our full potential and live happy, fulfilling lives. I cannot accept that an implanted embryo has the same rights as a fully realized person. I cannot accept that a child should be forced to carry a pregnancy to term, no matter whether she understands what is happening to her, no matter the consequences to her mental and physical health, no matter the consequences to her future ability to realize her dreams. I cannot accept that any woman should be denied the choice to decide whether having a child is right for her at any time in her reproductive life.
I also cannot accept that it is preferable in a modern, secular, democratic republic that any citizen or resident should be denied lifesaving healthcare on the basis of someone else’s ‘beliefs’. I cannot accept that a medical practitioner can abdicate their professional responsibilities towards their patients I cannot accept that any citizen or resident should be forced to seek that healthcare overseas, in secret, in crisis, and (often) alone. I cannot accept that a pregnant woman has fewer rights than a non-pregnant person.
I was born in 1983, that bleak year for women’s bodily autonomy and reproductive rights. I attended a so-called ‘Vocational’ school that permitted teachers to inculcate their students into an anti-choice perspective, creating a little army of foetus-foot-pin-wearing anti-choicers. Being confronted with feminist theory, Marxist theory, and postcolonial theory at university quickly helped me to divest myself of the misinformation and scaremongering that is still so common in the abortion debate. I have been an atheist and a secularist as long as I can remember. Religion has never influenced my stance on abortion. No-one’s religious beliefs should inform legislation in modern, democratic republic – as Ireland is supposed to be.
I was born in 1958. At age 18, in 1976, I was living in Dublin when I became pregnant. Luckily I knew how to access an abortion in England, and luckily my boyfriend was working and could pay. We got the boat over in the morning, and I discharged myself AMA (against medical advice) to get the boat home the following morning, so that I wasn’t away from home too long – I’d told my parent I was staying overnight with a friend. The reason it was AMA was that there was no doctor available on the boat, and there’s a slight chance of haemorrhage from a D&C.
I have never regretted this. My children (although the first was accidental) are and were wanted children. I am grateful that I had access to the abortion information which was pretty much unavailable at the time. It was a very different era – we had to pretend to be engaged so as to access a prescription for condoms at that time.
I know what it’s like to feel invaded by a something I really didn’t want, it felt like a parasite, something alien taking over my body. I did tell my mother about the abortion in later life and she was supportive, and told me of the relief she felt when she had a miscarriage – she could not face having 5 children under age 6 at that time.
I totally support a woman’s right to bodily autonomy.
Thank you for sharing your story, and by doing so, supporting women who are now of childbearing age as we try to secure equality and dignity in healthcare. I’m so sorry that you had to travel, but I’m also so glad that it sounds like you have a happy life. (Sorry that this reply only comes now, a year after you shared your story.)